Crafting Immersive, Part 3: Make It Accessible
How do we foster accessibility in immersive work?
Koryn Wicks is an immersive maker, choreographer and multimedia artist based in LA. Her immersive work has been shown at diverse venues in the U.S. and abroad including Highways, The Bootleg Theatre, UCI and Slamdance DiG. In 2019, her piece Casting took home the Grand Prize at the inaugural LA Immersive Invitational. She recently founded Willing Kompany with Hanah Davenport. Willing Kompany is an immersive production company specializing in movement based immersive design and digitally augmented work. This summer Willing Kompany is launching Litmus, an intimate, virtual dance experience for one audience member and one performer.
First things first, I want to be clear that I don’t consider myself an expert on accessibility. I am in dialogue with accessibility and striving to integrate it more and more in my arts practice. This column is part of that practice and should be taken as a dialogue rather than a hard and fast guide.
As I mentioned in my first column in this series, my journey to immersive dance was informed by an awareness that concert dance is not widely accessible. We live in a society where a relatively small margin of the population have access to concert dance, let alone the kinds of experiences that build a base of knowledge through which to interpret concert dance. In general, without prior knowledge or context any artform becomes difficult to understand and interpret. This leaves a lot of people leaving dance concerts feeling like they don’t get it and no one wants to spend an evening feeling as though they’ve missed the point.
This is really the tip of the iceberg. On top of concerns about dance-literacy, other factors contributing to a person’s access to dance include where they live, their economic situation, and whether or not they feel welcome in spaces where dance is presented.
How does immersive art tackle these challenges? By inviting audiences into a work and asking them to participate we are immediately confronted with the challenge of communicating meaning and expectations and making experiences safe and accessible. In this way immersive work centers the question of accessibility, forcing artists to consider it first and foremost.
Mulling the question of accessibility over with my collaborators we identified three key considerations in the way we strive to make our work and the work of Willing Kompany accessible: creating performances that are meaningful and relevant to our audiences, allowing audiences to make choices about their level of immersion, and considering mobility and safety in our immersive design.
A new voice introduced in this conversation is Zachary Titus, a set designer whose experience includes working as an Imagineer for Disney.
Accessible performances
Hanah Davenport — co-founder of Willing Kompany, arts advocate, vocalist and composer: I think a key consideration for artists trying to make accessible work is to think about who their target audience is and how their work is relevant to that audience. In my work in outreach education I’ve learned that it is vital to consider who you are sending to work with which populations. Not all artists will connect with all communities. Because grants and resources are often tied to particular policies, I’ve seen a lot of artists trying to make their work fit into a specific agenda when it doesn’t. I think that this is ultimately a disservice to the audiences and communities we’re trying to serve.
Koryn: Yeah, along those lines I’ve stopped applying for grants that seek work tackling specific topics or themes. My process emphasizes collaboration, often I find that the meaning of a piece is built organically in dialogue between collaborators, artistic mediums and immersive design. It’s really hard to do that from a prompt. Instead of trying to adapt my work to particular grants with social missions, I’m focused on looking at how my arts practice can foster accessible performance.
Hanah: Yes, we’ve really tried to keep that in focus when applying for grants and other opportunities with Willing Kompany.
Another thing that has a huge impact on accessibility is where a performance takes place. Can people get there? Is it accessible via public transit? I find it incongruous that a lot of public museums, like the Getty in LA, offer free admission under the guise of accessibility, but are not accessible via public transit, or the transit roots that service these museums are only accessible in wealthy areas.
Alex — experimental musician, performance artist, sound technician: Ticket prices also factor into those kinds of considerations. Why is it so expensive to go to the symphony or the ballet? A $120 ticket says a lot about whose welcome at a given performance. When I go to see a performance with this kind of prestige pricing, I’m often forced to sit in the nose bleeds. From there you can see the people with the best seats in the house sneaking out at intermission or leaving to catch their cab or get to their car before the last curtain call. As an artist, I find that unbelievably frustrating. What if these events were run like music festivals, with all tickets at the same price point and the best seats taken by the people who showed up early enough to get them? How would that change these experiences?
Hanah: Yes, to push this even further, how can we create more free performances or performances in public spaces?
Koryn: Yeah, offering free performances is very appealing to me. Unfortunately, it’s hard to do that and support a company. When it comes to issues of equity in art making, the need for compensation is at the top of the list of conversation topics. That’s hard to do when the work is free, unless you’re supported by an institution or grant.
Hanah: Absolutely, so many of these issues stem from a social dilemma that boils down to a lack of investment in the arts.
Agency in immersion
Alex Lough: I think one of the most basic things immersive creators can do to be accessible is to acknowledge that it is unfair to force people to stand for an entire performance. It’s also impossible, if people really want to sit, they’ll sit on the floor. I think it’s important to respect audiences enough to give them the option to opt-in or out, even in an immersive setting. These options should also be crafted with equity in mind, for example seating should provide good site lines so people don’t feel like they’re missing out completely or failing at the performance.
Koryn: This is something I’ve always felt strongly about. Offering seating is also important for accommodating audiences that are differently abled. Or even someone who’s just come off a long, physical work shift.
Sam Alper — writer, performer: And regardless whether someone is hesitant or gungho, I think it’s important to make space for varying levels of interaction in immersive work. I don’t want people to walk away from an interaction feeling like they’ve let down the performance. I think there needs to be an atmosphere that whatever a given audience member can offer is okay. To that end, giving audience members the option to wear lays in I love you so much, SQUEEZE ME TO DEATH as a visual signal to performers that they’d opted out was great.
Koryn: There is also always a concern that interaction could go the other way, that audiences will break the bounds of participation and compromise the experience, performers, and community. To guard against this we’ve created host characters in a lot of our work. They set expectations and parameters at the top of the show. In I love you so much, SQUEEZE ME TO DEATH we also had ushers, characters that existed in the world of the piece but whose main function was to act as a gentle buffer between performers and audience. I think that using this kind of structure in immersive work helps to create a sense of security for everyone involved.
Accessible experiences
Robyn O’Dell — dancer: As a performer, I’m more focused on how we make experiences accessible. I feel a tremendous responsibility when I dance with audience members. It’s like having a baby bird in your hands. I’ve found that participation naturally builds trust, but it takes time. I wait for signals before pusing audience interactions into more complex places. You can sense eagerness or hesitancy in a person’s body language.
Brittany Tran — dancer: Yeah, and even if we knew not to engage with certain audience members physically [for example the audience members wearing lays in I love you so much, SQUEEZE ME TO DEATH], gesturing to them, or giving them direct eye contact was a tool we could use to engage them on their terms. Sometimes audience members started the performance with the lays and removed them by the end after being eased in.
Zachary Titus — set designer: I think for immersive makers there are two roles to consider, the good parent and bad parent. The good parent needs to respect people’s boundaries and give them agency within a work, the bad parent might use some gentle coercion to bring people out of their shells and push them a bit. I think in the work we’ve done together, that coercion has been extremely gentle, and that makes sense given the mission of Willing Kompany.
Koryn: Yeah, I think we’ve integrated the coercion you just described by creating what we hope are appealing invitations. I feel strongly that the power behind immersive work comes from allowing audiences to generate their own meaning. This is based in part on their lived experiences. In order to honor this equation, space needs to be made for the different ways audience members react to immersion.
Morgan Embry — lighting designer, performer: Lighting and scenic design play a huge role in the invitations you mentioned. I think that lighting can help audiences feel safe and secure in participation. There are some basic considerations I make when lighting immersive work, like making sure there is enough light for people to navigate the space safely. Then there are more emotional considerations like making sure the space feels welcoming or making sure that people don’t feel exposed.
Koryn: Absolutely, in world building we come up against all kinds of accessibility considerations. For example, I remember realizing in the middle of a performance of I love you so much, SQUEEZE ME TO DEATH one of our props was too low for a lot of audience members to engage with. I had never thought to consider that until I saw someone struggling to sit in it. That was a real learning moment for me.
That kind of learning through experience is an important part of our education as immersive makers, but relying too heavily on learning from our mistakes can be dangerous. It is my hope that by forwarding discussions of accessibility in our process we’re able to expand Willing Kompany’s commitment to accessibility at all stages of production.
The three topics addressed in the exchange above barely scratch the surface of a wide range of topics that fit under the umbrella of accessibility. Tackling accessibility in art making can be daunting because accessibility is such a complex topic. However, if we are making work that is asking something of our audiences, we need to consider them at every phase of the process.
On Tuesday, May 25th at 5PM PDT we’ll be hosting a live discussion forum featuring Koryn Wicks and some of her collaborators. Tickets are available now at no cost, with a reserve pool for NoPro Patreon backers.
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